The Fantasy Review’s summary and analysis of The Hunger Games Chapter 1.
This my first time reading The Hunger Games, but I have watched the films several times over the years and enjoyed them. Now it’s time to try the books and see what I think!
The opening paragraphs of The Hunger Games Chapter 1 show Katniss’s main priority from the very start – Prim, and her family. And survival. Katniss is from District 12, the coal mining district.
Katniss sneaks out into the Meadow on the morning of the Reaping, as there is no work and most people are at home until the afternoon when the Reaping begins. She’s going to hunt for food with a bow and arrow, which is illegal, but her father taught her how before he died in a mining accident.
She goes to meet Gale, a guy around her age from District 12. It seems they’ve grown up together and probably romantically like each other (even if they won’t admit it). Teenagers are awkward as fuck though.
During the short few paragraphs when we meet Gale, we are given a lot of information at once, laying the foundations of worldbuilding to come later in the chapter. We hear words like “Reaping” and “The Hunger Games”, and they take the mick out of the “Capitol” accent. There are hints at the darkness to come, and some of this overshadows what is happening in the moment, but it’s a brief section.
“We have to joke about it because the alternative is to be scared out of your wits.”
The one line that made me laugh because it’s the only bad line in the chapter isL
“He could be my brother. Straight black hair, olive skin, we even have the same gray eyes. But we’re not related, at least not closely.”
I get what Collins wanted to get across – there aren’t many people in the district, and they don’t travel. It’s an open air prison, so they only breed with each other, so Katniss and Gale might be closely related – who knows?
Also, this puts across how she sees Gale as more than a hunting partner – he’s like a brother, the closest confidant and friend she has. But the line still makes me laugh because it sounds incestuous and there’s an undercurrent of romance here!
While they snack on bread and cheese, Gale muses about running away together. This is something that irritates her, like the impossible dream of leaving this place is too painful to bear. And what of those left behind? (I’ll come back to this later).
“Leave? How could I leave Prim, who is the only person in the world I’m certain I love?”
They go fishing and catch a bunch of fish and pick some strawberries before heading back to the black market to exchange some of it for other items, like bread, salt, and paraffin.
The last person they sell their wares to is Madge, the Mayor’s daughter. Here we learn of the unfairness of the Reaping rules, where the poorer people end up having their names in several times at once in return for grain, etc, but Madge would never need this. Gale fumes at this, but Katniss seems to have given up on being angry at the situation:
“His rages seem pointless to me, although I never say so. It’s not that I don’t agree with him. I do. But what good is yelling about the Capitol in the middle of the woods? It doesn’t change anything.”
After seeing the movies several times, I can only assume that there is some foreshadowing in those sentences…
So, they go their separate ways and Katniss goes home to her mother and Prim to eat food and get pretty for the Reaping.
The Reaping in the square is pretty standard YA dystopian exposition for the most part, but it’s engaging and interesting. I wanted to read the exposition, and that’s no mean feat! The way all these worldbuilding threads are knitted together is fascinating.
The Hunger Games Chapter 1 ends with the reveal of Primrose Everdeen, Katniss’s sister, being selected as the female tribute for District 12 in this year’s Hunger Games.
Now, of course, I have watched the films many times over the years, so I’m not going to be shocked by any of this, and I know what happens next, but if I didn’t then this first chapter would still have me absolutely hooked!
You can see why these books took off so spectacularly. Sure, there are some elements of potential romance with the strapping, slightly older guy who has dreams of running away and having kids (“he could be my brother”), but none of this detracts from the fact that this is written well.
Katniss is a strong character, and by that I mean we have a pretty full picture of who she is in the moment we meet her. We see how much she sacrifices for the people she loves, to take care of them, no matter the risk to herself. And the idea of running away “irritates” her – she’s badass.
